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Sunday, March 4, 2012

Sleep

At least one third of every man's life is spent sleeping but not much people think about it and how it affects the quality of the day. If a person doesn't get enough good quality sleep he will end up feeling tired therefore his performance in his daily activities will not be as good as it could be. Sleep is a very important part of a healthy lifestyle.

There is still not much information about the purpose of our sleep. Our body is still fairly active during it but it's known that sleep is very important for our mind. In our sleep the mind organizes the gathered information, stores important stuff into our memory and rests our body.

In order to know how sleep impacts our lives and what to do to make the best of it, first we need to know more about it.

NREM that consists of three stages (N1,N2,N3) has relatively little dreaming.

N1 is the stage in which a person transits from a state of awake into sleep. The person looses the most conscious awareness of the external environment.Usually a person will not be aware that he slept if he was awaken from this stage.
N2 is the stage in which conscious awareness of the external environment completely disappears, this stage occupies the most time of the total sleep. A person will be very much aware that he was sleeping if he was awakened from this stage.
N3 is the stage which is also called the deep sleep. This is the stage where sleep-walking,sleep talking and other parasomnias occur.

The REM stage is often said that is the most important stage of sleep. It occupies around 20% of a person's total sleep. In this stage most vivid and memorable dreams occur. If you wake up at night, it's most likely after this stage.

The REM stage is marked green.

A typical adult need around 7-8 hours of sleep per day. Less than that might have a bad effect on your everyday life. That is when a person sleeps once a day. Some people practice the so called polyphasic sleep where they sleep more than once a day but in shorter amounts. When people are prevented from experiencing REM, they take less time than usual to attain the REM state. By preventing your body to get enough its desired sleep, it adapts and falls into the REM stage more quickly. By doing that, such people spend less time sleeping in total and have more free-time to do their favorite activities. But it requires great effort and determination which I personally lack.

Generally if you want to have a higher quality sleep you should drink some water and avoid heavy foods before going to sleep. Also you shouldn't use alarms, because you will feel much better and more rested if you wake up by yourself after a REM stage than you'd if your sleep was interrupted even if you slept longer. If you keep your sleeping routine consistent and tend to go to sleep and get up at exact times everyday, you'll find that your body will get used to it and in general will feel much more rested and will have no problems waking up.